Broken In
by Hysp
Summary: As Team 7 disintegrates, the two members still in Konoha are left to contemplate the events that have come to pass. Set during the time jump.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** "Naruto" © Masashi Kishimoto.  
**Genre: **Angst  
**Rating: **Pg 13  
**Pairing(s):** Kakashi/Sakura  
**Summary:** As Team 7 disintegrates, the two members still in Konoha are left to contemplate the events that have come to pass.

**Author's Notes:** The 'Time-jump' scenario is wonderful to work with. Nobody knows what happened during it. :)

* * *

**Broken In**

Hatake Kakashi is going insane.

He has yet to have it fully diagnosed, but he does not like hospitals - let alone Tsunade. In fact, he doesn't much like the Sannin at all. Except perhaps Jiraiya. Jiraiya is the one who provides him with the infamous orange cover to hide behind, the smut he buys not so much to read but simply to feel a little less alone. When he comes upon situations he is not able to deal with (usually the ones that do not involve killing), Kakashi disappears under a façade of paperback novels. A mask upon a mask. A layer upon a layer.

Yet...he does not fight against the realization, for insanity is the one thing he can count on. It has hounded him, more faithful than his dogs, and over the years it has developed into a twisted game. To see which will come first, his death or...something else.

But on occasion, when he wakes up in the mornings, he likes to kid himself that everything will be alright. That his world is not a hell-hole of fucked up promises. That Sasuke never ran away. That Naruto never left. Then he swings his legs over the side of the bed and the tinkling of the dog tags at his throat tells him otherwise.

-

Haruno Sakura is going insane.

Tsunade has already noticed her steady deterioration during training sessions. In the way her hands shake when they have not yet started to spar, the way she shivers and not a leaf is stirring in the topmost branches of the tree standing just outside the Godaime's open office window. Sakura notices her stares but smiles and tells her nothing is wrong then demurely clasps the offending appendages behind her back.

She has not slept for more than three hours at a time - she can't. She still has to catch up to her boys. She wants them to be proud of her, proud of what she has accomplished. The more she shakes, the more she no longer needs them to watch over her.

She is cool during the human autopsy Tsunade watches her perform - slicing into specimens that are not as preserved as they should be, each cut, each incision letting out another hiss of putrid stink, another drop of blackened blood. She is able to break, heal, and break again the limbs of missing-nins under Ibiki's merciless instruction. But in her own room, swathed in her own colors, her hands still tremble.

Sakura lies to herself sometimes. She likes to pretend her universe is still whole and impregnable. That she and Ino still bicker over Sasuke. That Naruto is still there to infuriate her. Then her mother knocks on the door to tell her dinner is ready and it's such a normalaction that she disintegrates into quiet sobs.

-

Today is the first time in months Sakura has seen her sensei. He saunters past her in the bustling street and she is hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia so strong she can feel her fingers begin to quiver. For the first time in months she is reminded of her teammates and the fact that she forgot them, for even such a little while, _hurts_. She tails Kakashi with much trouble. These past weeks being re-enlisted into the ANBU has done much for sharpening his (though neither will admit it) softened skills.

He does not seem surprised when he turns around on his doorstep to find her calmly standing there. He smiles, so damn familiarly, with only that one eye of his and she accepts his invitation to come in. Sakura sits at the table while her sensei prepares two cups of tea. They sit, steaming mugs in hand, and neither says a thing. Time melts away yet both do not begrudge the silence. For the first time in months, they are able to lose themselves completely in their thoughts knowing another - just across the table littered with bills, kunai, a fragmented flowerpot - is in the same precarious state of mind. After about an hour of meditative stillness, she starts to fidget absentmindedly with her teabag. Right, left, right, left, unable to stop. The Copy Nin glances over and abruptly, the tranquility becomes a suffocating blanket until she lays a gloved hand over his larger one and everything goes downhill from there.

-

It is early morning when Sakura leaves Kakashi's apartment. She finds it ironic how the first time she spends the night in a man's bed, it is her teacher's - even more so that they do not do anything. The prospect of sex is not intimidating in the least to both of them; shinobi (especially kunoichi) rarely stay virgins for long, but it is the very idea of such an act with one they know intimately. Sex is not terrifying. It is sex with someone you _know_ that is so frightening for the Hatake prodigy and protégé.

So when Sakura finds herself in her sensei's bed after a rather heated, rather enjoyable set of kisses, she looks down and jade green locks with mismatched blue and he panting, her breaths small gasps and the Sharingan is whirling lazily in impudent opposition to the heavy, heady atmosphere and Sakura remembers to breathe - _breathe -_ then she utters a muffled, strange noise and Kakashi all but pushes her off and they lie side by side on his rumpled bed and they breathe, really _breathe_, because they know that this is wrong, _wrong, **wrong**_.  
They lie there for hours, neither moving or sleeping, simply thinking. The alarm clock on his nightstand beeps suddenly into the darkness, bursting into their hazy minds and jolting them from their numbness. She blinks rapidly as he stretches and both of them climb shakily out of bed. They do not look at each other. They do not need to look to tell each other that both their worlds are falling apart. That whatever glue that holds what's left of Team 7 together is slowly decaying. If there even is a Team 7 at all anymore.

-

It is early morning when Sakura leaves Kakashi's apartment. She lets herself quietly out the front door and that afternoon, when she passes her sensei in the street, they look to each other and he winks in that nonchalant way of his as she bares her teeth in a smile-grimace and that moment is over in a split-second and she cannot explain why it happened in the first place.

Then Naruto returns with all his bullheaded ways and she knows.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** "Naruto" © Masashi Kishimoto.  
**Genre:** Angst  
**Rating: **Pg 13  
**Pairing(s): **Naruto/Sakura, Naruto/Sasuke, Team 7-ness  
**Summary: **Hatake Kakashi was insane. But sometimes he thinks he still is.

**Author's Notes:** I really have no idea what the time frame for this is. Warning: no plot, no purpose, no moral. Just emptiness and shallow character exploration.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto is going insane.

He knows life is not fair. He likes to think that Konoha has shrunk, that he stays still. That if he squints just right and angles his face towards the warmth of the sun, that everything is perfect – nothing will ever change. The sun stays constant.

He notices right from the start that Sakura is not quite right. Too fragile, but not in that paper-and-butterfly sort of way that scares him. Fragile in the smallness of her frame, the slenderness of the fingers that curl easily into the chakra-laced punches he has come to know so well, just fragile in the way she has matured so much, gotten so strong, and become much more feminine than anyone really ever expected out of an outcast among outcasts – the sexless girl strewn between the legacies of her male counterparts. But at night, when business is done and they are standing outside the debriefing room picking out crusted blood from underneath cracked fingernails and fidgeting from too many sores in all the wrong places, Naruto invites her back to his apartment: a late celebration of sorts for their induction into Jounin-hood. He is suitably surprised when she accepts.

They agree on only a few cups of sake but as the night grows longer, reason becomes archaic. He starts whispering in her ear. Romantic things. Stupid things. Sweet nothings. But slurred, they come out desperate, lost, and lonely. He finds this ironically appropriate for the two of them – the way they cannot figure out what they _want _so bad let alone act upon it. He wakes the next morning with more bruises than he came home with and the smell of flowers imprinted on the empty wrinkles of his bed.

-

Haruno Sakura is insane.

She has loved, lost, and loved more than she can set straight. She keeps on smiling at Kakashi's blind, retreating back whenever he passes in the street. He meets with her sometimes: in the park, walking to the market, unexpected. Always in complete silence. They have never done anything more than breathe. Together, in sync, at odds, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, inhale.

She remembers the morning Naruto came back. She remembers all the mornings she has spent with him since then. She remembers the ceremony given in honor of the newly appointed Jounin. She remembers every night she has spent with him since then.

Once, she sees Kakashi and Naruto together, through the window of Kakashi's bare kitchen. Arms full of groceries, she stops and the fist that was poised to knock lowers slowly. They do not talk, just sit and stare at hands scarred and callused, nursing identical cups of tea. Then Kakashi says something too short to follow his lips and Naruto gets up to leave. She watches them look at each other for that last couple of seconds. Naruto smiles briefly and makes for the door. Sakura places the brown bag of greens near the corner of the walkway, next to the plain, broken pot full of dried fertilizer, and leaves quickly and quietly, somewhat guiltily.

They are all entitled to their own, private moments of sanity.

-

Uchiha Sasuke is going insane.

His is a very different type of insane – a fire, a slow burning, dull fire that never lets him alone. Even when he sleeps, the insides of his eyelids flicker with the ugly maroon flames of his degenerating mentality.

He recognizes it by the time he kills Itachi. He recognizes it in the way his brother's cloak flutters as Itachi's throat smiles open and wide (wider in death than he ever smiled in life, Sasuke muses) and pukes the waterfall of blood that bleeds the Akatsuki cloak darker.

He had recognized it when he began his return to the Sound village after a brutal training session in the forest but did not quite make it back the last five miles. He had recognized it after, in the way he had hidden whenever he sensed Sound ninja near, equipped with instructions to bring back Uchiha Sasuke, alive…or to bring back Uchiha Sasuke's eyes, intact.

Sasuke does not remember the next few years in great clarity. Not until he finally finds Itachi does the world come rushing back in full color. The palette is almost too much for him to handle but an Uchiha can never complain of seeing the world too bright, too fast, too _alive_. The color red is the first color he has noticed in a long time. The sound of the unsettling gurgles and the thud of a limp body on stained dirt are the first sounds he has noticed in a long time.

Sasuke sleeps that night and only darkness welcomes him.

He does not hide the next time he sees the glint of sunshine on metal and hears the rustle of leaves stirred up by shinobi feet.

-

Uzumaki Naruto faces insanity.

The heavy pants of his adversary below him snap him back to reality. He nearly stabs himself with his own kunai when the voice rasps out and it is so familiar and unnatural that (what the hell) it must be genjutsu or that snake (bastard) must have taken over Sasuke or it really is genjutsu and Akatsuki are after him (_again_, but Itachi's _dead_) or maybe someone is playing a (really, really) cruel joke – either way Naruto is not taking any chances. He stabs downward…but halfway through the motion, the kunai falls from his half-hearted fist and Naruto's chest heaves with huge breaths drawn too shallow and eyes open too large for his face (please, please, _please_ let it be Sasuke) and he grabs the Uchiha by the collar, bends over (never mind the awkward position, fuck that, Sasuke's _back_) and grinds his knuckles into the pale collarbone of his former comrade, noses bumping, mouths crushing and tastes the iron tart of fresh blood permeated with the scent and feel of everything Uchiha – in the back of his mind, Kyuubi growls his assent and starts to flick his tails back and forth (screw it) so Naruto breaks for air and Sasuke looks a bit shocked (as shocked as that squinty-eyed asshole could get) before glaring through hooded eyes and declaring his surprise and salutations in the only way he knows how.

"Get the fuck off, dobe."

-

Hatake Kakashi was insane.

But sometimes he likes to think he still is. He chides Sakura when she breaks down his door and begins to drawl out a half-formulated excuse for his tardiness when he realizes the impossible is dripping dirt and surliness on his discolored carpet. His toothbrush drops and the towel around his waist nearly falls.

The dog tags clink at his bare throat.

Sakura smiles while Naruto holds up living death.


End file.
